Stuff from the PockBox

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It’s so difficult to find a good photo of a charcoal peacock, but here’s a charcoal blackshoulder someone posted to one of my groups. Usually their wings are grey and it’s hard to tell that the bird isn’t also grey instead of black (most photos are overexposed in order to see detail), but in person, they are a black based bird.

Charcoal peafowl are a mutation that shouldn’t be bred forward; their lifespans are often half what a normal peafowl’s is, and the hens are all sterile. It survives and continues to be bred because people like melanistic birds. Charcoal is propagated via breeding the males to hens that are heterozygous for the mutation, which for many breeders often means breeding a male to a wild type hen, and then breeding the het charcoal hen offspring back to their father.

@vincedakota​ asked if there were any more ethical dark morphs, and there are a couple!

Buford bronze, sonja’s violeta, and midnight morphs are all good, dark ones.

Here’s a buford bronze BS, though this is a little washed out

And a sonja’s violeta BS (sometimes people call these ones “violet” or “violete” instead of violeta but the person who original produced the morph named them Sonja’s Violeta after either his wife or daughter I forget which, and I choose to respect that nomenclature, especially since it makes it easier to tell someone’s talking about THIS morph instead of european violet). They actually shine purple in good light.

And a midnight BS

Of course I make this post and the same day find out that there’s a new black morph that has recently appeared in France, that they believe is separate from charcoal given the stark striping on the wings instead of the grey striping. The male it appeared in first is pied, which is why he has white spots.

His first full-black hen children will be breeding age this summer, at which point we will be able to tell if they are a charcoal-mix (like, a double-color or something), in which case she should be sterile, or an actual new-black color, one that is capable of breeding. Since the original mutated bird is only a few years old, it will be unknown whether their lifespan is affected but if the hens are fertile, it’s a good bet that the lifespan may be normal, too.

Here’s the first lady!

If it proves out as a new and unique morph, then it will take a little work to breed the leucistic out of them and BS into them, but it will pay off in an all black bird that is actually healthy, and maybe breeding of charcoal birds will be allowed to die out in favor of these guys.

(I am still trying to locate the source of the birds, these photos are being passed around groups but so far I have been unable to locate the farm that took them).

*editing to add that I was able to send a message to the original owner, in what little french I know, to inquire. They have them listed as Charcoal, so I don’t know if the hype in the groups is because people are looking at the photos and deciding it’s a new morph or what. I’ve asked if they know whether the hens are sterile or not, since the advert the photos were taken from did not include several of the ones here (meaning I suspect someone talked to the person and got more photos), and was advertising split hens, not full ones (indicating perhaps that they ARE charcoal, or charcoal based, and the full hens are sterile).

Recently this mutation has been popping back up on my feed, which makes sense as it’s about the time you’d start seeing more of them around if they were breeding. There is even video now! Multiple videos actually. These appear to be of the same male as originally posted (above, you can see the same white streak in his train).

They are calling the mutation “black,” which is also nice. It does NOT appear to be charcoal- the brown in the wings is uncharacteristic of charcoal (which typically has a more grey/charcoal colored wing that’s almost pink-grey), and it appears that the black mutation a) breeds true and b) has fertile hens.

With my most sincerest bird loving hope, I would love for this mutation to wipe charcoal out of existence in favor of a healthier black bird. MOST charcoals don’t get this black to begin with (and there’s a good chance the initial photo I posted was at least in part darkened/edited, even though charcoal ARE a nice dark bird), and with the added health issues (poor feather quality/condition due to genetics not care, sterile hens, shortened lifespans), there should be no question about which bird to keep if someone wants a black-colored pea. I know some idiot out there is going to whine and complain about preserving mutations but not all mutations are good and worth preserving. Some do harm and should die out. Maybe someone will import some blacks soon; I know there’s another export planned for january on the EV and/or UM, since one of the two people that brought them in lost the founding stock (brad, it was brad)